Donald Trump's been sounding the birther trumpet for about a year now, but this week he reignited his talk and for some reason the media sat up and paid attention. "Look," Trump said, "a publisher came out last week and had a statement about Obama given to them by Obama when he was doing a book as a young man a number of years ago in the ’90s: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia.'" The reason people are still listening to this stuff is that Trump is now acting as a Mitt Romney surrogate – he even held a fundraiser for him in Vegas on Tuesday.

Then there's former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R), currently running for Senate in Michigan. Recently seen scrubbing his website of a racially-charged ad that ran during the Superbowl, Hoekstra this week floated the idea that there should be a national office to examine the birth certificates of potential presidential candidates. For some reason reporters wouldn't stop asking him about it, and he got a bit angry. "This is an absolutely ludicrous discussion to be having four years after a presidential [election]," Hoekstra shouted. "It is an absolute waste of time and energy."

Also talking crazy this week:

• A spokesman for Republican Rep. Nan Hayworth's (NY) campaign, Jay Townsend, suggested on Facebook that we "hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators" in response to a question about gas prices.

• Curtis Knapp in Kansas became the latest in a long line of pastors to make inflammatory comments about gay people, telling his congregation: "Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them? No, I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should."